Attica

chapter 4

Board-combers into Bundles

It seemed the villagers had put a pile of photograph albums purposely where the three could find them. Chloe leafed through a couple of them, but of course they meant nothing to her. They were mostly black-and-white photos, many out of focus and misty. A lot of the people in them wore suits, or full dresses. Others were in uniform. A great many of the subjects had obviously posed for the photo. These were pictures from the beginning and middle of the last century. They were from old wars, one of which Mr Grantham had fought in. To Chloe they were ancient history.

Those pictures which had no human subjects were of totally unrecognisable landscapes. Foggy, dark mountains. Dense, dark forests. Bleak, cold-looking, dark oceans. Why anyone would want to take a picture of such uninteresting scenes was a mystery to Chloe.

Then suddenly she came across one which, when she opened it, had ‘Property of Susan Atkins’ written inside.

Susan? That was the name of Mr Grantham’s fiancée. But there must have been a million Susans out there, past and present. It was unlikely to be Mr Grantham’s Susan. However, the album was small and would fit easily into the bag Chloe was now carrying. It was light too. She would take it back and – if they ever got out of here – show it to Mr Grantham.

Alex was in the process of stopping a villager in a sewing-machine car. The driver jumped out and ran away on being confronted by the boy. Alex then went down on his knees to inspect the vehicle. Chloe showed him the album and asked him what he thought.

‘Those old photos were probably taken with Brownie box cameras,’ he said to his sister as he wobbled a pedal made of cast iron, pushing it down to see how the gears worked which eventually turned the wheels. ‘I saw one once in a backstreet shop. Those places are probably not as bad as they look. It’s just that the cameras weren’t that good.’

‘How come you always think you know so much?’ said Jordy, joining them. ‘Smarty.’

Alex said, ‘Only about things like this.’ He spun the governor wheel of the sewing-machine car, so that an armature whirred rapidly. ‘When this sewed dresses and things, that was the arm that made the needle go up and down. Now it gives this vehicle its forward motion.’

Jordy grunted. ‘He talks like a robot. He is a robot.’

‘You leave him alone,’ Chloe defended her brother.

Jordy was about to protest that he didn’t mean anything by it, when he noticed a movement coming from the wardrobe village. A lot of the stumpy, thick-chested inhabitants had gathered under a rafter and were muttering and pointing towards the trio. It seemed they had weapons in their hands: hockey sticks and cricket bats. Some even had long knives, the edges of which glinted wickedly. They began to move towards them and Jordy felt a sort of hard lump in his throat and a panicky feeling in his stomach.

‘Uh-oh, trouble,’ he said, trying to keep his tone even. ‘We might have to make a run for it.’

‘What’s upset them?’ asked Chloe, seeing the mob. ‘Why are they doing this now?’

Jordy said, ‘I dunno, but they’re cutting off our retreat. Maybe it was you, messing around with their photo albums.’

Alex had moved away from the sewing-machine car now.

‘Maybe it’s because you stole some of their food and drank from their umbrellas without asking,’ he said.

‘Or because you nicked one of their cars,’ riposted Jordy, ‘and started taking it to bits.’

Chloe cried, ‘Stop arguing. They’re still coming.’

The villagers were indeed in an ugly mood. They were making low grating sounds in the back of their throats. It was an eerie noise which scared the three children, who began to back away into a corner, towards the edge of the attic. They were not used to violence, even though Jordy had done karate at one time, and had boxed a little. They were kids who came from neighbourhoods where things were settled with words rather than weapons. Alex and Chloe, especially, were beginning to get very frightened. Jordy put on a brave front, but he too felt the terror of the moment.

Just when it seemed the villagers were about to fall on them and start beating them, a bugle sounded from afar in the attic. There were startled looks on the faces of the advancing locals. They stopped dead in their tracks. One of them shouted something. They all began running back to their wardrobes where they took up stances of defence, as if they expected an attack.

Sure enough, out of the dusty columns of light came another set of villagers, all swishing golf clubs. They were also bearing makeshift shields: lids of cooking pots and dustbins. This group were generally thinner and less robust than the wardrobe people: they had a willowy appearance to them. They were just as bald, however, and carried just as much plaster dust on them, and had a similar number of lumps on their skulls.

The two groups stood about twenty metres apart and began to yell and wave their weapons at their adversaries, obviously each daring the other to come forward. Finally both sides rushed together and began striking their opponents with their various clubs. In the confusion the three children were forgotten. Chloe, Jordy and Alex made off as quickly as they could, running out into the wide open area of the attic, anxious to be gone once the combatants had finished their fight.

As well as Chloe’s bag they took with them a backpack they had found, filled with edible plants they had taken from the hydroponics beds. The ‘food’ was quite light, even when crushed down, and the boys took turns in carrying the backpack. With Chloe’s water bottle they were prepared for another trek across the attic. All of them had their particular cravings, of course: with Chloe it was chocolate; chicken tikka masala for Jordy; hamburger and chips with Alex. The vegetables they had to eat were nourishing and kept them alive, though they were hardly enjoyable.

But at least they wouldn’t starve to death.

Jordy could hear the sound of hockey stick on dustbin lid for quite a while, before the noise of battle faded away behind them.

After half a morning’s walk they came across another village, which Chloe called ‘the wash-tub village’ where the inhabitants obviously curled up in wooden tubs to go to sleep. They passed one or two tubs in which village children were resting, coiled neatly round like a length of rope on the deck of a sailing ship. It was possibly part of the reason why the wash-tub villagers were so lean.

Here there were no sewing-machine cars, but old golf trolleys propelled – or rather, yanked rapidly forward – by casting with a fishing rod, catching the fishing hook in a plank or rafter, and winding in the slack. This transport was not so efficient as the sewing-machine cars, but there was less to go wrong. The drivers sat astride the golf bag attached to the trolley, and balanced it on its two wheels with tremendous skill. When they reached the end of their lines they removed their hooks from the wood with sets of what looked like long-handled pliers.

The children watched enthralled as some of the villagers – obviously those who had chosen not to go to war with their fellows – were engaged in casting huge distances with heavy lead weights. They stared as the drivers then reeled in the line with astonishing speed, thus covering a great distance in a very short time.

‘We should try that,’ Jordy said. ‘Better than walking.’

‘The skill required,’ Alex pointed out, ‘must take years to acquire.’

The children passed by the village warily, encountering the same strange looks they had been used to with the wardrobe people. Not wanting to antagonise the washtubbers as well, they thought it best to get out of the area as quickly as possible. It seemed easy to upset these people, especially when you didn’t know what was expected of you. As Chloe pointed out, this was an unknown culture. They might well have been Marco Polos, travelling through China in a bygone century.

‘These people are probably from abroad,’ said Chloe, warming to Jordy’s theory that ‘travellers’ had been allowed to use the attic of the house below during inclement weather, ‘with a culture quite different from ours. We must have done something that was insulting to them, in some way, without realising it. That’s what’s upsetting them.’

Jordy said, ‘Never mind them, have you seen any trapdoors lately?’

‘I haven’t seen a trapdoor since we left the forest,’ replied Alex. ‘Not since you mentioned your watch was going backwards.’

It was true: the long and level boards stretched far away, both behind them and ahead, with not a trapdoor to be seen. The long lean boards were light-grey with age, like flattened days, and seemed endless. It was as if infinity had been pieced together and placed before them, to become eternity. Time and place were one, a single entity. The grey days were planks, the grey planks were days. A whole section of boards made a month. Several sections were a year. A region turned into a century. A cluster of regions became a millennium. Square supporting timbers embedded in the millennia, beams and rafters, angled buttresses held up a whole history and prehistory, time on the shoulders of place, until the millions of plank-days, plank-months, plank-years curved away into unknown futures and pasts.

‘We must come to the end of the attic soon,’ muttered Jordy. ‘Even if we’ve got a furniture warehouse below us. I mean, I’ve seen them from the motorway, these big storage depots, and they’re massive. How we managed to wander from our house into one of those I don’t know, but that’s what it’s got to be. Maybe there was an industrial estate behind the trees of our back garden? I haven’t looked properly, have you?’

The other two didn’t answer him.

He had to admit to himself that the horizons stretched far and wide on all sides, vanishing into the gloom of recessed corners and niches. Above them there was a sky full of triangulated rafters, and high, high above the rafters the occasional dirty square sun which let in the light of the outside world. Bright golden light full of golden flecks of dust. Magical really. To Jordy they looked like teleportation shafts that could transport you to a golden world, but of course when he stood in one nothing happened. They were just sunlight and dancing dust motes piercing the gloom.

He had to admit his warehouse theory was unlikely too. Were the largest warehouse in Britain below them, it was improbable that it could support such a huge attic. Yet Jordy reminded himself that, when you were in a house without furniture, an open space such as one might find in the attic of a massive storage depot, it always appeared bigger than it was.

Yet wherever he looked, there appeared to be no end to this attic: it seemed to go on for ever.


Moving out on to the wooden-plank plain, beyond the villages, Jordy, Chloe and Alex left the edges of the attic for the central desert. Here previous wanderers had placed upside-down umbrellas and parasols, open to the heavens, their spikes in the cracks between planks. These seemed to be situated under leaks from the roof, which dripped into their ‘bowls’ whenever it rained in the real world outside. Thus the children had the benefit of these oases, as they crossed the flat, wooden, arid areas of the attic, where even the spiders were scarce. Occasionally, above them, a bat flew in the darker regions, flashing across one of the dirty skylight windows. On the floor were some beetles on their backs, having fallen from a great height somewhere up in the sloping lanes of the roof.

Jordy said, ‘I wonder what this place is called?’

‘Attica,’ said Chloe. ‘I call it Attica.’

When she received no reply, she added, ‘The word “attic” comes from Attica, a region in Ancient Greece. Athens was the capital.’

‘You’re such a damn swot,’ grumbled Jordy.

‘No, I just like literature and language. I’m not as clever at science, maths and geography as you two. Well, maybe science, but not geography. At least, not the geography of the modern world. I’m better at the geography of the classical world.’

‘All right, all right,’ grumbled Jordy. ‘You’re better at everything. Who cares right now? We’re lost. Can you make a compass with your bare hands? No. Can you draw me an accurate map of where we’ve been? Some things you’re good at and some things I’m good at.’

Chloe did not want to quarrel so she let this go, even though she was sure Jordy could do neither of those things.

Once or twice they ran into impassable hedges, consisting of mangled wire coat hangers twisted together into an impossible mass. Some of these barriers were more than two metres high and almost two kilometres wide, with no gaps in their twisted entanglements, just a torn rag or two to attest to victims who had tried to get through. There was no way over these metal hedges, whose glinting wicked hooks clawed at their clothing much as the thorns of African bushes might do.

To Chloe this was indeed the crossing of a continent fraught with unnatural dangers and hazards. She still had the feeling they were being followed and she often spun round, hoping to catch the creature who pursued them, only to find perhaps a lump or two on the horizon, but nothing that moved. All was motionless. Even the dust lay unmolested like a fine covering of tawny flour upon the ancient planks. The scene before them, and behind them, was almost holy in its silence and stillness.

Now that she knew there were people here like the Atticans, who could do them harm, she was especially vigilant. Who knew what beings might come at them out of the far reaches of the gloom? Now they had met with life of a kind, anything might be possible. Expect the unexpected.

‘What’s that, in the distance?’ said Jordy, pausing to take a drink from an oasis umbrella. ‘Can you make it out?’

Alex and Chloe peered into the gloaming of their twilight world. There seemed to be hills ahead, gentle at first, but rising to a monstrous-looking mountain. Visible in the haze of sunlight which came through chinks and cracks in the roof, they saw that the hills were fashioned from heaps of chairs, and others of sports equipment, but the mountain itself appeared to consist entirely of rusty weapons of war.

On this formidable vastness of dark metal they could make out old corroded guns, their muzzles like thousands of small black mouths jutting from the upper crags; rusty bayonets and swords which stood out as vicious spikes on the lower ridges to impede any climber; slippery helmets forming slopes of dangerously loose scree. The whole mountain exuded menace, forbidding and hateful, dominating the scene ahead. It rose to impossible heights far up into the arrowhead shape of the roof, higher than the bats flew, higher than the light from lower windows. Up, up into the impenetrable darkness of unbreathable space. There its peak no doubt shaved the topmost rafter of the roof with its pointed blade.

‘Have we got to climb that?’ asked Alex, in hushed tones.

‘Dunno,’ said Jordy. ‘We’ll find out when we get there. Could be we’ve found our way into a government storage place, where the army keeps all its old weapons. I mean, government buildings are massive, aren’t they? And you never get to see how big, because they won’t let you on their sites.’ His next question was almost a pathetic plea for support. ‘Did anyone see one near our house, anywhere?’

Neither Chloe nor Alex saw the point in answering.

Chloe had not felt so helpless since that time at school when she was on what her teacher Mrs Erland had called ‘expedition training’. They had gone to Scotland, to the Highlands, to learn orienteering with maps and compasses. Chloe and her friend had set out, each with one of those items, and they had been separated by fog. Thus, though Chloe had the map, she had no compass, and the fog had prevented her from seeing the sun or stars, so she had absolutely no idea which way to go. Fortunately she had had her sleeping bag and its waterproof cover with her, and some provisions. She was eventually rescued by a search party.

All the feelings she had experienced during that incident in Scotland came flooding back to her now. Not just a sense of helplessness, but varying degrees of anger directed both at herself and others.

Jordy seemed to have rallied his own strength of spirit and asked, ‘You OK, Clo? You look a bit down. Don’t worry about that old mountain up ahead – we’ll probably find a way round it.’

‘Oh, I’m not worried, Jordy.’

‘How about you, big buddy?’ cried Jordy heartily, putting an arm round Alex’s shoulders. ‘You OK?’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ murmured Alex, without conviction. ‘Happy as a kookaburra. Hey!’ His voice brightened and he pointed. ‘There’s Nelson, out there on the horizon.’

There indeed was the chubby princely shape of Nelson, rolling along on his three pins as if he were still at home. Nelson was a cheering sight to the three children. The familiar figure barrelled along seemingly unconcerned by the plight he was in. He had something in his mouth.

‘Nelson! Nelson!’ called Chloe.

The ginger tom saw the children and came to them. He dropped a dead mouse at their feet.

‘Oh, Nelson,’ said Chloe softly, in admonishment.

All his life Nelson had been bringing his human friends such gifts. But were they pleased? Not a bit. Never. Often, they were annoyed. There was no fathoming such ingratitude. But he still kept trying.

He allowed himself to be fussed and stroked with such affection as he had never known before then, seeing that his gift had been spurned, he picked it up again and wandered off into the gloom. It seemed so normal to the children, to see their cat rolling along without a care, that they too took heart.

Jordy especially felt that, as the eldest, he ought to show a bit of leadership. Leaders, according to the captain of the cadets he used to belong to when he and his dad were on their own, do not reveal any private concerns to their followers. Leaders show a granite jaw and talk tough. They share the problems, but not their worries. It was one thing having three heads to sort out an obstacle, but another to lay one’s fears on the shoulders of the rest of the group. Things were not desperate, he kept telling himself, only matters for concern. If they all stuck together, and used their common sense, they would come out of their travels unscathed.

So far they hadn’t found a single watch, which told Jordy something about their search. It seemed to him that the watches must all be gathered in one place, just like the war weapons ahead of them. There must be a hill of watches somewhere, which would make their search easier, he felt. After all, to look for one watch, which might be hidden anywhere, was daunting. Looking for a whole sparkling hill of watches, then sorting through them for the one they wanted, seemed a much easier task.

‘What’s that?’ he cried, alarmed, as he saw something out of the corner of his eye. ‘Over there!’

But when the other two followed his pointing finger, all they could see was a bundle of rags under a feather-boa tree. Chloe took her list of books from her pocket. It comforted her to see how many fantasy novels there were on it and to recall how many of them ended happily.

‘If I find something to write with – and on,’ she told herself, ‘I’ll transfer the list, maybe update it, on a better bit of paper.’


‘What?’ asks the bat. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

We ought to warn them, says the masked board-comber. We ought to tell them to beware of Katerfelto.

‘You need to protect the girl, is that it? You think she’s got a map in her pocket, don’t you?’

She does keep looking at that piece of paper.

‘It might be a shopping list. A tin of boot polish. A dozen eggs. That sort of thing.’

I think it’s a map.

‘That still doesn’t mean there’s something in it for you. No one would have a map showing a cache of Eskimo ornaments, now, would they?’

Inuit. You must call them Inuit. There could be lots of things, mutters the board-comber, which I could use to trade. Stage jewels. I know lots of board-combers who collect stage jewels. Porcelain figures. Stamps. Cigarette cards. If there’s treasure on that map I want it.

‘You want? You want? That’s a bit selfish, isn’t it? What about those poor kids over there? They were nearly killed by those villagers, you know. Did you go and help them then? No. And why? Because you knew you could get the map afterwards, once they’d been murdered. If it’s lost up the mountain, though, you’ll never be able to get it, will you? You’re terrified of Katerfelto.’

So are you.

‘Yeah, well, I’m not after a map, so it doesn’t count.’

The bat begins swinging back and forth on the board-comber’s ear.

Stop that.

But the bat keeps on swinging.

When evening time comes round, the bat flies away on its usual jaunt to find food. The board-comber, in a heap by an ostrich-feather shrub, watches the children from beneath the brim of his hat. He watches and he watches. When he hears slumber, when he sees slumber, he crawls from his outer clothes as if they were a snail shell. They are left behind. Once or twice, perhaps it is practice, he darts back again, quick as a rat, into the clothes. However, the children really are asleep and besides now it’s so dark only a wolf or a bat could see him. He slithers and slides until but a metre or two from the sleeping forms. There he writes in the dust. Then he shoots back again, flashing through the darkness, to enter his coats.

‘Did you enjoy that? Your trip out?’

Wha— you back, are you?

‘Yup, full of insects.’

No burping to prove it.

‘Wouldn’t dream of such bad manners.’

Yes, well, I know you.

‘And I know you, mine host. Here, lend me your ear, I come to bury my claws, not to prise them. The evil that men do lives after them …’

Quiet, I need to sleep.

‘Did you warn the children?’

I left a message – messages.

‘Uh-oh, you couldn’t resist, could you?’

What?

‘Asking them about the map.’

No, no – I never asked them about a map. I simply asked if they knew about any stamps or coins.

‘Same thing. Same thing, old host. Now you’ll have them looking in every trunk, under every pile of books, for treasure – you realise that?’

Why should they?

‘Because children are like combers: they collect things, especially if they think they’re valuable. You should know. You were one once. Maybe you’re still one, how would I know? I’m just a bat.’

I’m going to sleep.

‘All right, you sleep, I’ll keep watch.’

What for? asks the board-comber, looking round nervously into the pitch-black darkness.

‘You know.’

The board-comber shudders involuntarily, as he remembers that the Removal Firm could be near. While he has no particular reason to worry, he fears he may have done something wrong without realising he has transgressed. The Removal Firm do not listen to reasoning or excuses: they act on their belief in a creature’s guilt.


‘Hey, have you seen this?’ cried Alex, on his way back to the others from a drinking umbrella.

‘What?’ asked Chloe, not very interested, thinking it might be an old steam-engine toy or something of that nature.

‘It’s a word, written in the dust.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Something about Kate somebody.’

‘It’s probably spider tracks.’

‘No,’ said Alex firmly, ‘it’s a word all right. Here, I’ll show you. Look.’ He pointed.

‘That says “Katerfelto”. That’s not a word, is it?’

‘I dunno. Look, here’s some more. “Any stamps? Any coins?”’

This made Jordy come over and look.

‘Cool,’ he said, ‘Attican graffiti. Stamps and coins. Hey, that would be something, gang. Treasure indeed. I once heard a man found an envelope in his attic which had a stamp worth thousands. Mauritius stamp, I think. He was an East German and very poor, so it meant a lot to him.’

Chloe said, ‘It would mean a lot to anyone, that amount.’

‘And coins!’ crowed Alex. ‘There must be coins up here. Old war medals. This could turn out to be a treasure hunt. We could be rich.’

‘Well,’ Jordy said practically, ‘first we have to find Mr Grantham’s watch.’

‘That’s true,’ agreed Chloe. ‘But picking up treasure on the way can’t do any harm.’

The two older children had forgotten completely about the first word etched in the dust: Katerfelto. It was overlooked in the excitement of realising they were in a potential Aladdin’s Cave. Their minds were now tuned to seeking stamps and coins. They scoured the floor with their eyes, looking for the glint of bright gold, burnished silver. Or the dirty yellow of ancient paper envelopes, perhaps held together by a rotting rubber band. This was an adventure to lift the spirits!

On then, into the sunlit-shafted world of Attica, like three lost mice within the walls of an enormous castle. At noon a dust storm rose, seemingly from a single powerful draught coming from the direction of the mountain. The grey choking motes were blown from the boards and from the cracks between, into a thick blizzard. The children tied handkerchiefs around their mouths and noses, but still the dust got into their lungs. There were cobwebs flying about too, and the light airy bodies of dead spiders, along with threads of cotton. They stumbled forward, there being nowhere to take cover, into the blinding, choking storm that threatened to suffocate them.

When they were just about exhausted they came across a deserted Attican village, the huts of which were old cupboards. Each of the children found one and crawled inside, closing the doors. Outside, the storm continued to rage for quite a while, until it finally abated and they were able to come out of their dark holes and into the dim and gloomy light. Stillness reigned now. And they were unharmed. Perhaps not safe, for they wondered where the villagers were, who once lived in these abandoned homes.

Yet no one came, after the storm had gone, and they assumed they were in a ghost village, a ruined place, long since evacuated for some reason. It stood in the shadow of the great mountain and Chloe could feel the sadness there, in the woodwork of the cabinets and cupboards, in the piles of junk that littered the floor between the huts. Someone had once loved this village enough to decorate it with gardens of silver candelabras overhung with artificial waterfalls of crystal chandeliers. The cut-glass ‘jewels’ and ‘gems’ on the chandeliers shone like diamonds in the spears of sunlight. The candlesticks and candelabras glistened like silver flowers in their beds below these hanging wonders. Yet there were no owners to appreciate their beauty.

Where, thought Chloe, had the people gone?

‘Deserted!’ stated Jordy, as if his decision was based on a long scientific study. ‘Not a soul around.’

‘Well, duh,’ Alex scoffed. ‘Maybe they were massacred?’

‘Who by?’ snapped Chloe, who was already feeling nervous, having sensed that a horrible deed had taken place here.

Alex did not like to upset his sister. He shrugged, ‘Who knows? Some other tribe, maybe. I don’t know.’

‘Attican wolves,’ Jordy said. ‘I heard them last night.’

Chloe shook her head firmly. ‘That was just the wind, howling round the eaves of the house. No, no – one thing we haven’t seen is live animals up here. Not if you don’t count the bats and insects. This is a strange world and getting stranger the deeper we go, but one thing you can count on, I reckon, is that it won’t be like the outside world.’

‘There are no wolves in Britain.’

‘Yes, there are,’ she replied firmly. ‘In zoos and game parks. And the outside world isn’t just Britain, it’s everywhere. There are still wolves up in Alaska.’

‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Jordy, still not willing to give ground. ‘We’ll just see. Something killed them off, that’s for sure.’

‘Or simply chased them away,’ Alex said, sorry that he had raised this issue now that Jordy and Chloe were going at each other. ‘Maybe it was disease or something.’

All three then looked at their hands in horror.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ muttered Chloe, wiping her palms on her jeans. ‘Don’t lick your fingers.’

Alex said, ‘Who licks their fingers?’

‘You bite your nails,’ remarked Jordy. ‘I’ve seen you.’

They found the nearest water umbrella and washed their hands thoroughly. Chloe would have liked a bath, but she knew that wasn’t possible unless they came across another water tank. She stared at the vacated village while the other two washed. If they had all been killed, or died of disease, there would be bodies. She could see no corpses. Then there was Jordy’s theory of wolves. Perhaps not wolves, but something else, something like a monster made of old kitchen sinks with washtap teeth and plugholes for eyes? Something like that would surely swallow the villagers whole and leave no trace.

Alex had gone to sit on a pile of books to inspect his fingernails.

‘Now you’ve gone and mentioned it,’ he complained to Jordy, ‘I really want to bite them. I didn’t before.’

‘Mental reaction,’ said Jordy, joining him. ‘Now if I said “Liquorice Allsorts” what do you want to do now?’

‘Bite my fingernails.’

Chloe sat down next to her brother, then reached into her bag for the bottle of water she carried. On yanking it out she caught the photo album by a silken cord which hung from its spine. The album flew through the air and hit one of the cupboards, bursting open. The sepia-brown prints inside fell out, the glue of their photo corners long since having lost its stickiness. They floated to the floor like autumn leaves to gather at the feet of the children. Alex laughed and kicked them, to see them raised in a cloud again, and settle once more. Some of them fell face down, others on their backs. Suddenly Chloe darted forward and picked one up, reading the words written on the reverse of the photo.

‘Lance-Corporal John Grantham,’ she cried. ‘Look!’

She turned the photograph over and there, not plain to see but since they knew who it was they could recognise him, was a very young unsmiling Mr Grantham. He was wearing a peaked cap and was in uniform, proudly displaying a single stripe on the sleeve. He was sort of half-sitting, looking slightly over one shoulder. The uniform looked unsullied and the photo, Chloe guessed, had been taken before he left England for the war in foreign places.

They picked up some of the other photos and began poring over them. A great many of them were of people Chloe did not recognise: older people in very old-fashioned boots, suits and shapeless frocks. Some of them were of Mr Grantham. There were several of him standing with a pretty young woman in a polka-dot frock. They guessed this was Susan. She looked happy, being helped over a stile in a meadow by a grinning John Grantham in baggy trousers and sleeveless jumper with zig-zag stripes. There was a dog there too, a mongrel by the looks of the startled beast, caught playfully grabbing a trouser turnup.

Jordy was looking puzzled.

‘What?’ asked Chloe. ‘Come on, tell.’

‘Well,’ he said, looking at the photo he was holding, ‘it’s all a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’

Chloe shrugged.

They were interrupted by a yell from Alex, which sounded very much like a cry of triumph.

‘What about this then, eh?’ he said. He waved something whitish, a piece of paper. ‘What about this!’